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Topic: Constructing individual missiles (Read 1196 times)

So I decided to start a game with missile tracking enabled. I am having trouble figuring out how to construct individual missiles, however. The "Construct buoy/munition," task in the Shipyard Complex window doesn't seem to work, as it expects me to select a small craft.I've assigned preferred loadouts to the classes in question, but have yet to build a ship of the class. Is that required first?I could probably just use the "Load ships," button to handle this automatically, but somehow I feel like that's cheating. I feel as though I'm missing something obvious.

Granted, I could just use the missile fund. I'd rather try and get this working first though.

You first have to design the design. Then use the design to create a class. Then you set up the magazine for that class. Then you build a ship. When the ship completes there will be a "magazine loadout" created in the construction facitility (using Planetary industry) that will add the missiles to the magazine.

After that extra missiles come from a generic build order given to your homeworld, if the magazine changes and the ship is in a system with a planet with a small or larger population. Outside of that you have send in a collier where it will be automatically reloaded...one problem with the system is if you change the magazine load out then the system will off load the old missiles even when no new missiles can be loaded in.

Construct Buoy/munition is for buoys, minefields or SBMHAWKs. You have the option of assigning to a specific ship in a class (select the class you wish and the the specific ship) or to assign it to the system.

You first have to design the design. Then use the design to create a class. Then you set up the magazine for that class. Then you build a ship. When the ship completes there will be a "magazine loadout" created in the construction facitility (using Planetary industry) that will add the missiles to the magazine.

This seemed to work properly. I'm not sure I follow the rest, though.As long as the ship is in a system with a small or larger population, missiles will automatically be reloaded? I think where I'm getting confused is the "generic build order." Do I need to actually do anything, or will the shipyard automatically schedule the load out and ship it via the CFN?

The missile construction and reloading is handled a bit "abstractly"...

If the ships is in a system with a poplulated habitable world (basically speaking) then if the current magazine does not equal the class magazine load out your homeworld will produce missiles and they will show up in the ships magazine(s) by magic. So end of turn 3 your ship which should have 100 SMs has only 50 SMs, on turn 4 your homeworld shipyard will show an entry for "magazine replacement" and 0.5 HS and 2.5 MCr will show up as a cost the ship in question will have a message showing it got 50 extra SM.

If your magazine loadout for the class changes in turn 30 to add in 5 EDM then again for a ships in a system with a populated habitable world the same sort of thing will show up on your turn 11 report.

If the ship is in a starless nexus on turn 4 or 11 then it gets no missiles and you get a report saying that it needs missiles.

If you on turn 3 swap out 100 BM for 100 SM in the class load out then if the ship is in a system with a populated habitable world on turn 4 there will be a message about it swapping out 100 BM and getting 100 SM. If the ship is in a starless nexus then you will get a message at the start of turn 4 about 100 BM being removed but no SM will be added and the ship will be flagged as needing missiles.

If on the other hand you had a collier present then the missiles will be removed from the collier to replace the missiles expended or changed...then when you move the collier back to a system with a populated habitable world it will get its magazines replaced. The next turn will show this as an expense...and your homeworlds industry will be charged.

The initial magazine loadout can also come from a shipyard, so when you are building Bases in a starless nexus they will get their initial loadout as part of their construction. So for a magazine with 200 SM you would see 2 HS construction capacity (out of the 4 from completion) and 10 MCr extra change.

When the SCN changed over to AM weapons, I changed my loadouts on turn 246 and on 247 I got a bill for 54000 MCr more or less. Then I started finding situations where bases or ships had only lost missiles and so on...that is evened out by colliers or moving the ships to a system with a populated habitable world.

You don't need to do anything except move colliers around or move your fleets needing new missiles to a system with a populated habitable world. The system works reasonably well, but colliers are rather critical to keep your ships in missiles. The CFN is not really involved (or behind the scenes) and you basically only have to check the message log each turn to see if something needs correcting...and cringe from time to time as colliers are reloaded or whatever.

Okay, so I'm at TL2. With that, I'm able to get courier drones and DSB-N.

Do I need to do anything special to emplace them? I'm a bit worried the map is going to be inaccessible with my screen reader. It looks like they would be handled with the System Items window, but I'm not sure. Is this abstract too? I'm guessing sending messages via CD is.

On the messages window (ctrl-M) there's a "Create New Message" button in the upper right corner (in 6.. You can use that to send messages with a time delay. It's something I always liked about SA that Steve took out of Aurora.

…Huh. I didn't notice that feature. I use the Messages window for receiving messages, of course, but haven't actually sent any to myself.

I'm kind of torn. On one hand, Aurora is still under development, and has AI of sorts, but SF seems quite nice in its own way. Both programs have accessibility issues, Aurora perhaps more so. I've always bounced off Aurora when it looked like I'd need to depend on the map.

Do people send messages to themselves in solo games? If I want to play by the rules of SF as regards communications and so forth, I have to at least allow time for ships to deliver them. I'm curious for folks' thoughts in general.

I just work out the communications time and don't react to the event until that time has passed. One battle we had an awesome set up where there were two maps (one upstairs and one down) and the SMs just walked up and down adjust the map. That really brought home fog of war and made system level movement suddenly a lot more interesting and critical. In this case the limit was communication speeds of CDs in-system. Due to me not realizing there were CC equipped ships available the defeat in detail I could have inflicted didn't get inflicted.

You just build them and ship them to the system you want (deep space buoys)via the CFN. Or build them and give them to your survey vessels and they can deploy them as they explore.

If you use the supply rules...remember to make your survey ships supply ships and fill their H with 500 MCr of supplies...sooner or later that will save you a lot of time and effort at repairs.

SFA assumes you are using the physical map to fight out the battle. Starslayer and I use Vassal which allows us to fight the battles out over the internet but would also allow you to solo play the game out with a map and counters. But usually we use the physical map and counters method...especially when we get together. The system map is mainly useful for figuring out quickyl what can or can't be seen by colony sensors.